Shoot Many Robots looks promising, but the news that Ubisoft is publishing the …

Shoot Many Robots is a promising side-scrolling shooter, and a title we have been keeping an eye on. The game is scheduled to be released on the 360, PS3, and PC as a digital download, and it was just announced that it will be published by Ubisoft. This is not good news for those of us hoping to play the game on the PC. In fact, I tweeted something along those lines yesterday, which rankled Demiurge Studio's Albert Reed.

Ubisoft seems to be openly antagonistic towards PC gaming these days, with last-minute delays hitting a number of big-name titles, and chokingly bad DRM forcing you to activate the game every time it's launched. The last victim was From Dust, a game that suffered all these issues, not to mention a lazy port. To make matters worse, Ubisoft mislead gamers about the nature of the DRM included with the game. It has now been announced the activation requirement will be patched out of the game, which makes sense: a working crack hit the Internet almost as soon as the game was released.

So here we are, with a game being published by a company with a terrible track record for PC releases, and a developer promising us the PC version will be up to snuff. We'll be sure to check back when the game is released in 2012.

to be fair, companies sometimes do learn their lesson from massive publicity shitstorms like they just went through with from dust. having arstechnica and other pretty massive sites openly ridicule them and in a few cases call for full on boycott of ubisoft games cant be a good thing, especially when the buying public starts to agree. it should be hard to imagine that they'd let it get worse, their track record however, suggests they might.

to be fair, companies sometimes do learn their lesson from massive publicity shitstorms like they just went through with from dust. having arstechnica and other pretty massive sites openly ridicule them and in a few cases call for full on boycott of ubisoft games cant be a good thing, especially when the buying public starts to agree. it should be hard to imagine that they'd let it get worse, their track record however, suggests they might.

The public shitstorm that followed Assassins Creed 2 made From Dust look like nothing. It's reason they got all the ridicule surrounding From Dust, but they not only didn't learn, they managed to try screw everyone at the last minute by changing their minds after promoting it differently, like no one would notice.

I can fully imagine that they could get worse and I fully expect it. Regardless of what happens though, I'm not buying this game. The developer isn't the publisher and DRM can be slammed in at the last minute regardless of what the developer says now.

If Ubisoft manages a couple of years of DRM free (or at least reasonable) games, I'll buy one again. Not until then.

to be fair, companies sometimes do learn their lesson from massive publicity shitstorms like they just went through with from dust. having arstechnica and other pretty massive sites openly ridicule them and in a few cases call for full on boycott of ubisoft games cant be a good thing, especially when the buying public starts to agree. it should be hard to imagine that they'd let it get worse, their track record however, suggests they might.

Frankly, it doesn't matter how many people cry foul about the DRM or when they remove it. Unless there is a massive (and I mean massive) influx of new buyers once the DRM is removed Ubisoft simply won't care. They'll see the fact that DRM was removed and still no-one bought the game and rationalize that they pirated it. It really doesn't help that From Dust looks thoroughly mediocre.

Further, Mr. Reed: You're intentions may be pure, but unless you can shift the focus of a major corporation then your intentions mean about as much as a hill of beans. I hope you can make the game that you feel that you can make for the PC, but (I'm a bit cynical, I know) we'll see.

If Ubisoft manages a couple of years of DRM free (or at least reasonable) games, I'll buy one again. Not until then.

How about if Ubi and EA just buy out everything you like? They could even buy Flash (Adobe only really needs the video player bits), and you won't get to play Lame Castle without 4 different login checks.

This guy should learn not to run his mouth and write checks his ass can't cash. I bet someone from Ubisoft gives him a call to warn him about making statements that can be interpreted as "taking sides" or making promises against the standard operating procedure of the company paying the publishing bills.

I think the From Dust debacle was somewhat expected and taken as a calculated risk. They're releasing the patch (in two weeks) because by then they will have stopped casual pirates from stealing the game... and the crack is in wide circulation anyway.

Many people seem to forget that the publishers pretty much know they're not going to eliminate pirates. They're just trying to minimize their damage, and the vocal minority probably doesn't hurt game sales as much as that minority would like to think. Joe the Gamer will buy From Dust without much knowledge of the DRM.

I have no reason to believe that Ubisoft will not simply rail-road the devs and their game will be yet one more to add into the steaming pile of crap that currently covers the good games that had the sorry misfortune of using Ubisoft as a publisher.

If Ubisoft manages a couple of years of DRM free (or at least reasonable) games, I'll buy one again. Not until then.

How about if Ubi and EA just buy out everything you like? They could even buy Flash (Adobe only really needs the video player bits), and you won't get to play Lame Castle without 4 different login checks.

What if there's a nuclear blast that destroys all the computers except one with a copy of My Little Pony the video game on it, would you play it or would you give up on gaming?

Unlikely (and frankly absurd) hypotheticals are something I'll address when it happens. For now, I refuse to buy Ubisoft games because there are plenty of other games available and I feel it's an appropriate action to take. If Ubisoft and EA manage to take over the market I'll wait for the inevitable indie titles to roll out, or I'll play my gigantic collection of games that I've never played through, or I'll buy games built on Silverlight. Assuming Microsoft doesn't sell out too.

I have not bought a first run Ubisoft game in a long time. I am a PC game nut. I buy a lot of freaking games. My Steam game list is pretty much entirely unmanageable these days due to its length. I don't buy Ubisoft games. Well, I take that back, I do buy them on occasion, but they need to be sailing around $5 before I plop down the cash. I more or less assume any Ubisoft game is going to be a flaming piece of shit in terms of DRM and will explode the second I upgrade my graphics card or re-format my hard drive and reinstall. I'll occasionally buy their junk, but it has to be going for almost free. That said, I'll happily plunk down for games with a little sanity. For indie games not DRM'd up the ass, I'll happily pay as much as they want.

I'll admit, when I was younger, I pirated. I was broke. The option was either to have the game for free, or not have it at all. Meh, you can argue the morality of that, but regardless I my wallet was closed whether I was enjoying myself or not. If you had a magic DRM that could keep me out, it wouldn't teleport money from my wallet to the publishers bottom line. It would just mean I don't play the game. Personally, I think this is the case for most pirates. If you could magic DRM away, the only thing you scored was a some perceived moral victory. It adds nothing to the bottom line.

I am adult now. I have a job. I don't have kids. I have disposable income to spare. $60 isn't going to dent my budget. The price of a game is never going to put me off. The only limit to the number of games I'll buy is simply how much time I have and the quality of the game. If 10 good games appear in a month, I'll get them all. DRM that magically locks down the game isn't going to get me to spend more. It will however get me to spend less. On a normal day, I would have happily bought Dust and not thought twice. I didn't because of the panning it got for the DRM and for being a consolized POS.

The fantasy that one less pirated copy is one more sale is good shit to sell to politicians, but you would think companies would have learned now. DRM won't increase your sales, but they sure as hell can tank them. RIP Spore.

Many people seem to forget that the publishers pretty much know they're not going to eliminate pirates. They're just trying to minimize their damage, and the vocal minority probably doesn't hurt game sales as much as that minority would like to think.

Actually, they're trying to show investors they are doing "something" about piracy, even if it doesn't work. Explaining to shareholders that piracy is going to happen and no amount of DRM is going to stop it won't help because they are generally far from computer savvy.

This is not good news for those of us hoping to play the game on the PC.

That makes me wonder: why would you want to play this on the PC?

This is a 2D side-scrolling shooter. It's not like people identify the PC platform with that kind of game or anything. We're not talking about FPS's or something. This is exactly the kind of game consoles were made to play. There is zero benefit to playing this on a PC.

The only reason I could see for wanting to do so is if you are entirely console deprived.

This is not good news for those of us hoping to play the game on the PC.

That makes me wonder: why would you want to play this on the PC?

This is a 2D side-scrolling shooter. It's not like people identify the PC platform with that kind of game or anything. We're not talking about FPS's or something. This is exactly the kind of game consoles were made to play. There is zero benefit to playing this on a PC.

The only reason I could see for wanting to do so is if you are entirely console deprived.

I agree. For the twitchy mouse and keyboard first person shooters, MMORPGs, and RTS games the PC makes some sense as a primary development platform. For almost everything else, the overwhelming majority of copies sold on consoles vs PC makes even having a PC version a bit of an afterthought. That doesn't excuse crappy ports of course, if you are going to offer and charge good money for a PC version of a game you owe it to your potential customers to release a game that works and that doesn't require painful slogs through DRM hell just to play.

PC gaming likely won't die, but the growth in the PC gaming market has been in free to play and casual 'time waster' type stuff like Farmville. Actual sales of big budget retail PC games have been slowly declining for years. The last game I bought for the PC was Unreal Tournament. Though the pixel-pushing-power of a PC is still ahead of the consoles the gap in actual visual quality has closed considerably. Yes, a game might have more detail running at 1600x1200 on my desktop rather than 1080i on my TV, but given the choice I'll take HD on my 57" TV sitting comfortably on my couch with a wireless gamepad vs. leaning over my desk staring at a 20" monitor.

The PC gaming enthusiasts are a vocal group, but a pretty small one in the grand scheme of things when it comes to money spent on AAA titles. Maybe not even offering a PC version would be smarter than putting out a half-baked port from the console version, but that would result in just as much bitching and bad PR. As it is developers are in a tough position of having to devote resources to maintaining a version of a game for a platform that makes up a small chunk of the market but whose users feel entitled to a better experience than the bread and butter customers who will buy the game on the PS3, Xbox360, or Wii.

NulloModo, you need some catching up on PC gaming if you think 1600x1200 is what good desktops handle and your last game was Unreal Tournament. Try 2560x1600 with 4xAA at high frame rates and then we can talk.

We don't feel entitled to anything. We are just fed up with games being developed for hardware that was rapidly becoming outdated back in 2006. We know how good games can look so our expectations are higher.

For a long time now my solution has been to skip buying any game published by Ubisoft. Its worked very well, I don't have to put up with this stuff.

For NolloModo, PC gamers are still representing a profit for developers or they wouldn't be releasing a PC port to being with. Many AAA titles can expect to sell a million or even multi-millions of copies on PC, Battlefield will almost certainly move a million units even with all this Steam/Origin BS.

Don't forget that the numbers getting reported, those that say the PC game market is declining, they don't take into account digital sales. Digital sales are the fastest growing segment of the PC games market, I haven't purchased a physical retail copy of a game in the last two years. So don't think you can look at the NPD numbers and think you have any real idea of what PC numbers are.

Bottom line PC market means money or titles wouldn't be released and if they are going to expect our money why should we get an inferior product, in terms of ease of use, than any other platform?

I think the From Dust debacle was somewhat expected and taken as a calculated risk. They're releasing the patch (in two weeks) because by then they will have stopped casual pirates from stealing the game... and the crack is in wide circulation anyway.

Crack was in wide circulation on day 2 on piratebay (according to the dates on torrents). "Casual pirates" were playing the game fine by then, and would have been playing just as fine if it was a one time activation DRM instead as it would have likely taken about as long for crack to surface.The only ones who got screwed over by DRM were idio.... ahem customers who decided to purchase the game.

It never ceases to amuse me how many apologists there are reusing the same, long debunked arguments as if they somehow became true just because they have been parroted enough.

Ubisoft have been doing shoddy cash-in conversion work for quite a while and it's not only limited to PC... just look at their HD re-releases on the consoles.

Any developer signing with Ubisoft knows what they're getting and shouldn't be making any grandiose promises that Ubi won't back up. They also shouldn't be surprised when it costs them money because a fairly large chunk of the market refuses to allow hype to persuade them into a purchase they're likely to regret.

E.G. I was looking at pre-purchasing From Dust and Bastion on Steam, on seeing who was publishing From Dust I grabbed Bastion but wouldn't pull the trigger on From Dust. When the DRM situation for From Dust became apparent I was going to pirate in order to get a superior version, but in the end couldn't even be bothered after I heard what a shoddy port it was.

As to the PC versus console debate, many people have limited access to the main TV in their house so being able to play on the PC while their other half is watching something naff is a massive boon, also with EOL looming on the consoles the PC guarantees you'll still be able to play your game in a couple of years.

I agree. For the twitchy mouse and keyboard first person shooters, MMORPGs, and RTS games the PC makes some sense as a primary development platform. For almost everything else, the overwhelming majority of copies sold on consoles vs PC makes even having a PC version a bit of an afterthought.

Oh, so the PC is just better for FPS, RTS, and MMORPGs? That leaves the consoles good for... uh... side scrollers and sports games? I think maybe I'll sit the console revolution out.

There is no doubt that console's do more business these days. The hardware, while laughably inferior to a modern PC rig, is cheap. You can score a tidy pile of crash pawning off terrible casual family games to people who would normally be afraid to be near a computer. If you are a game company, you should be dumping money into console sales to score some quick cash. Thankfully, knowing that I am missing out on Wii Sport really isn't causing me lost sleep.

That still doesn't change the fact that if you want to play the best and most bad ass games, the PC is still the king. Watching someone fawn over Halo... a frankly lack luster game, pretty much sums of the console Vs PC battle for me. Halo never made it big on the PC. They did port it over, but no one cared. Why? It just wasn't a good game. For the average PC user, Halo was nothing new. It featured the same a gimped version of multiplayer modes that PCs have had for a couple of decades, game play mechanics pioneered in the 90's, and laughably bland and dated graphics.

The real complaint that PC users have had against consoles isn't that they exist, it is that consoles drag down the entire state of gaming. You go from Battlefield 2 to complete shit like Battlefield: Bad Company 2, which is just a completely lobotomized version of the original BF2 with only slightly improved graphics. To take a half a decade old game and make it smaller, shittier, and more basic just so that someone with a gimped console controller stands half a chance of accidentally lining up his auto-aim gun on another player is infuriating.

Thankful, despite PC gaming getting deluged with shoddy console games, consoles still don't offer up anything exclusive worth wanting. Anything worth releasing is released on the PC (along with piles of crap that isn't). When done right, those games are almost inevitably better than their console brethren in every way possible.

I'll declare consoles the winner when something original and interesting gets released for the consoles worth playing that isn't ported over or simultaneously released on PCs. Otherwise, consoles might be the bigger cash cow, but for anyone who isn't a shareholder, who cares? I'm currently playing the new Dues Ex with the graphics cranked to their max. Somewhere, some poor console bastard is flailing about with his auto aim, fumbling with his inventory, suffering long load times, with graphics that looked dated 4 years ago on a machine that has specs that should have relegated it to someone's trash Linux box years ago.

The PC gaming enthusiasts are a vocal group, but a pretty small one in the grand scheme of things when it comes to money spent on AAA titles. Maybe not even offering a PC version would be smarter than putting out a half-baked port from the console version, but that would result in just as much bitching and bad PR. As it is developers are in a tough position of having to devote resources to maintaining a version of a game for a platform that makes up a small chunk of the market but whose users feel entitled to a better experience than the bread and butter customers who will buy the game on the PS3, Xbox360, or Wii.

I kinda agree. The publishers know how much each game is really selling (digital downloads included) and if the cost recouped from sales of AAA titles against the number of people getting it for free (i.e. pirating) keeps tipping then PC development is no longer going to be justifiable, especially with negative press from the preventative measures they're taking.

If the cost of PC dev, for what would be the higher end version (better textures, etc.) is taken off the budget, then at least some time and capital could be put back into console dev still dropping the cost of development. I'm not saying this is great or good but I can see at least some publishers and devs going this route and some already are. Ubisoft seem to be one - release a good experience first to consoles (a larger paying audience) and then do a _relatively_ cheap port to PC after initial dev to the smaller paying audience. Providing there's some money in PC (more than the cost of a port), they'll do it but as soon as people stop buying their PC games, I can't see them continuing after the fact ports.